The L.A. Times music blog

Personal Playlist: Henry Rollins

December 5, 2011 | 6:19
pm

The musician/DJ favors Miles Davis, Vum, Le Butcherettes and Boris.

If there’s any musician with a passion for potent playlists, it’s Henry Rollins. As a Saturday-evening DJ on KCRW-FM (89.9), you could say the former Black Flag frontman depends on them. His aggressively eclectic tastes range from iconic jazzmen to obscure Japanese acts. The gregarious punk legend shared some of his recent favorites with Pop & Hiss.

The Miles Davis Quintet “Live in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol. 1”: “It’s the lineup featuring Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. That’s the lineup that did ‘Miles Smiles’ and ‘Seven Steps to Heaven.’ Super prolific. It’s Miles with one of his most ridiculous lineups of all, just black belt samurai jazz killers. And it’s ‘Bootleg Series Vol. 1,’ which means that there’s hopefully more to look forward to.”

The local Topanga Canyon duo Vum and their limited edition vinyl, “Night Sun”: “It’s a guy and a girl, and they make this really low-key minimal music. I get so much stuff sent to me and a lot of it is, ya know, pretty bad. But this band immediately jumped out. One of the great things about the radio show is that you get to help some really good bands, when they’re basically running a record company out of their living room. So I’ve played them almost weekly on the radio.”

The bilingual punk band Le Butcherettes and their record “Sin Sin Sin”: “It’s a great record, but live, forget about it. [Frontwoman] Teri Gender Bender is a full-on rock star … in a good way. I saw her open for Iggy the other night and she just owned it up there. It’s great to have such raw talent happening right here in L.A. So I try to amplify anything like that.”

Japan’s Boris and “New Album”: “Boris is one of my favorite bands but they make it really difficult to collect them. It’s fun but it’s expensive. They’ll do like three versions of all of their albums. They did a version of the two albums mixed together called ‘The New Album’ and I think it had a few songs from ‘Heavy Rocks’ and a few from ‘Attention Please.’ Remixed and reinvented, it’s completely amazing and completely worth it.”